For example, when dry ingredients (i.e., powder articles such as toppings to put on cooked rice with hot green tea poured thereon, various fish and vegetable flakes to sprinkle on cooked rice, or condiments in packed ramen) put in a hopper are to be put into small bags, the dry ingredients are dispensed in small amounts sequentially in stages to pack a certain amount of them into the small bags. Mechanizing such a dry ingredient-bagging step requires a weighing mechanism operable to dispense the dry ingredients in certain amounts sequentially while weighing them, and a packaging mechanism operable to pack the dispensed dry ingredients from the weighing mechanism in sequence into the small bags.
One known type of a prior art weighing mechanism for sequentially dispensing the dry ingredients in small amounts is, e.g., a weighing mechanism comprising a plurality of multistage vibrating feeders serially connected in two-to-four stages, and load cell-equipped, weighing buckets. The multistage vibrating feeders are juxtaposed in several rows on the downstream side of a hopper having the dry ingredients held therein. The dry ingredients dispensed from each of the multistage vibrating feeders are weighed by corresponding one of the weighing buckets. A typical packaging mechanism for packaging the dispensed dry ingredients from the weighing mechanism is operated to package the dispensed dry ingredients sequentially into the small bags, while moving a small bag-forming packaging material in an either machine or cross-machine direction.
However, the prior art weighing mechanism employs vibrating feeders that contain individual vibration sources, and must avoid interference from the vibrating feeders. This requirement brings about a problem that the entire apparatus is increased in size. In addition, the prior art weighing mechanism must be provided with a special countermeasure to prevent weighing units such as load cells from being adversely affected by the vibration from the vibrating feeders. Nevertheless, the prior art weighing mechanism still has difficulties in accurately weighing the dry ingredients in small amounts.
Another difficulty is to combine the large-sized, vibration-causing weighing mechanism integrally with the packaging mechanism. Conventionally, the weighing and packaging mechanisms are supplied from different manufacturers, and are combined together on site or otherwise at an assembly plant in some cases. As a result, each time when the weighing and packaging mechanisms are incorporated into a bagging apparatus, these two different mechanisms must be modified to connect their separately designed mechanism to one another, and further to connect their separately designed control units to one another. The modification results in a rise in price of the apparatus, and both time and cost incurred by the modification are considerably increased.
In view of the above, objects of the present invention are to provide a downsized device for bagging dry ingredients, operable to weigh small amounts of dry ingredients accurately at high speed, and to simplify the entire device including its control unit.